So here comes Google Chairman Eric Schmidt, who, according to CNN, "has been thinking a lot about our digital future." Oh wow.
But I think Schmidt should stick to helping us search for cat videos and naked people instead, because he's obviously better at that. Here's what I mean:
1) Online privacy classes will be taught alongside sex education in schools.
Actually online privacy classes will be taught BEFORE sex education in schools, if we're talking about America or most of the developing world. We'd rather talk to our kids about anything but sex. We'd rather teach girls to shave and boys to braid hair.
2) The rise of the mobile Web means the entire world will be online by 2020.
This is such a techie-naive, developed-world prediction. This may be hard for Schmidt to fathom, but there are billions of people in the world today who have no use for the Internet, no matter how cheap it gets.
Only 31 percent of the developing world is online today; and only 16 percent in Africa. About a billion homes have no Internet access. And they're perfectly satisfied with their lives; or else, they can't afford, or relate to, anything that's on the Internet. They're barely getting used to sending text messages with their calloused, malnourished thumbs. And smartphones, tablets? Forget it! Hundreds of millions of people alive today will die of natural causes without ever having googled anything and they won't regret it. That's my prediction, Eric Schmidt.
Only 31 percent of the developing world is online today; and only 16 percent in Africa. About a billion homes have no Internet access. And they're perfectly satisfied with their lives; or else, they can't afford, or relate to, anything that's on the Internet. They're barely getting used to sending text messages with their calloused, malnourished thumbs. And smartphones, tablets? Forget it! Hundreds of millions of people alive today will die of natural causes without ever having googled anything and they won't regret it. That's my prediction, Eric Schmidt.
3) News organizations will find themselves out of the breaking-news business, as it becomes impossible to keep up with the real-time nature of information sources like Twitter.
Exactly. Because I trust Kim Kardashian over Wolf Blitzer to give me the latest breaking news.
Seriously, first they predicted that the Internet would kill print news; now Schmidt is predicting that the Internet will kill Internet news. Huh-what?
And what about every Republican over the age of 50 who gets most of his information from anonymous chain e-mails originating from 2003? How is Twitter going to replicate that "real-time" experience for them?
Here's my prediction: Internet news and journalism in general are going to move more towards the PolitiFact / Snopes model, because there are way too many lies out there nowadays and the fact-checkers can't possibly keep up.
4) "Since information wants to be free, don't write anything down you don't want read back to you in court or printed on the front page of a newspaper, as the saying goes. In the future, this adage will broaden to include not just what you say and write, but the websites you visit, who you include in your online network, what you 'like,' and what others who are connected to you say and share."
This is a really shitty, self-serving prediction for Schmidt to make. Know why? Because we can regulate this with a so-called right-to-forget law that is coming soon in Europe. And who stands the most to lose from such laws? Google, Facebook, etc., because they make money selling our private data and Internet habits to businesses. The Stanford Law Review estimated that they would stand to lose up to 2 percent of their global income just for refusing to delete our photos that we don't like.
5) As the Web expands, revolutions will begin springing up in nations with oppressive governments "more casually and more often than at any other time in history."
Ah yes, a casual revolution. That's one where an unacquainted group of dark-skinned, downtrodden lads in chinos and ironic plaid cowboy shirts sipping on Frappuccinos blog on their smartphones about their "lame" dictator and how they're "totally going to overthrow him this weekend"... sometime between the gym and Game of Thrones.
That's sarcasm, by the way. The words "casual" and "revolution" do not belong in the same sentence, unless you also include the word "failed."
6) More people will use technology for terror. But a Web presence will make those terrorists easier to find, too.
I put this one in the category of, "Things will get a lot worse, but they'll get a lot better, too."
Don't go too far out on a limb there with your prognosticating, Schmiddy!
By Doug Gross
April 24, 2013 | CNN
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